THOMAS2	GIANT WATER CHERENKOV DETECTORS FOR NEUTRINO PHYSICS
Type	Experimental
#students	2
Orientation	Why is the scientific problem of interest at all? Neutrinos have been of very high interest to physicists ever since they were postulated by Wolfgang Pauli in 1930. Today, there is still much that remains unknown about neutrinos. We know that they oscillate between neutrino species, that there are three active light neutrinos, and limits have been set on the neutrino mass. But there are many things we do not know, for example which of the neutrinos is the heaviest, whether they are Dirac or Majorana particles, and whether the CP violation parameter in the oscillations mixing matrix is non-zero, and if so what its value is.
How	How is the research going to shed light on the given problem?. As neutrinos rarely interact with matter, it is very hard to design experiments that can detect enough neutrinos to make measurements to determine parameters associated with neutrino oscillations. The CHIPS experiment is a novel detector concept which is planning to put a very large water Cherenkov detector in a lake created by a disused mine pit in the path of the NuMI neutrino beam in the US. This is to be able to acquire enough statistics in order to be able to measure some of those important unknowns in neutrino physics.
What	What is the specific thing that the student will do, and how does it fit inside the overall project? The project will involve working on the experimental hardware and possibly software. It will likely involve the testing of photo-multiplier tubes and other experimental hardware for the CHIPs experiment.
Special Knowledge
Supervisor	Prof Jenny Thomas jennifer.thomas@ucl.ac.uk Dr Anna Holin anna.holin@ucl.ac.uk
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